An engine room fire has knocked out the propulsion and the primary electrical system on the cruise shipCarnival Triumph in the Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula. Emergency generators are providing limited power to the passenger areas. The ship will be towed to to Progreso, Mexico and is expected to arrive on Wednesday. There have been no reported injuries among the 4,000 passengers and crew reported to be aboard the ship. Carnival Triumph is a post-Panamax Destiny/Triumph-class cruise ship, built in 1999, operated by Carnival Cruise Lines, sailing on 4 and 5 day voyages from Galveston, Texas to the Western Caribbean. Thanks to Phil Leon for contributing to the post.

6 Responses to Engine Room Fire Strands Carnival Triumph in the Gulf of Mexico, Will be Towed to Mexico

Now headed to Alabama because of strong currents and the fact she drifted further north.
Fox News:
Cahill’s statement said the ship should arrive in Mobile on Thursday and that the change will allow for less complicated re-entry for passengers …

Why was the emergency power so inadequate? Now, with the conditions onboard resembling the cargo bay of an old slave ship, now the stench will likely never be removed, so it’s time to drag it to Victory Ship Wreckers to be recycled. That’s half a billion bucks down the drain.

Why no separate rooms for the separate engines? With a ship that big, it can’t be single engine unless god forbid they were cutting corners. If so, that’s why I don’t ride on single engine ships. They were cutting corners with the emergency generators already. Where else were they cutting corners on engineering? Carnival must be buying ships from the cheapest builder out there.

Well, that’s 4,000 permanently lost customers after this latest mishap. I hope Carnival gets a massive lawsuit AND the ship has to be scrapped because of unremoveable stench. And the cruise business gets yet another black eye. A few years ago there was a similar mishap with, yes, another Carnival death trap. Imagine a Carnival transatlantic cruise at the half way mark and it drifts toward the iceberg…

To answer the question about redundancy. This ship has 4-16 Cyl and 2 12 Cyl engines in the same room. Any new cruise ship built after 2010 is required to have redundant systems and seperate redundant rooms. This would be impossible to retrofit the older ships. Following other fires, new fire suppression using misting water was installed to give immediate response to the fire and not endanger crew like Halon or Co2. Past fires were made worse by requiring the crew to exit the space before setting off the suppression. My guess is that the mist system is great for putting the fire out, but may have done more damage to systems getting wet, or the fire was in the primary switching. In any case, there are probably 6 engines able to produce electricity, but no bus to carry it on. Each of these events is learned from and the industry actually does try to mitigate further incidents. The regulations for all new ships is a mandate under UN.

Next worst problem after the lack of redundancy and isolation of critical components. ” cost saving”.
Has anybody ever checked the credentials of the untrained third world staff that are hired at minimum wage as operational and maintenance staff?
Not only do they not care about leaving flammable cleaning compounds. They neither understand or care why missing protective covers are removed for service and they can’t be bothered to re-install them. Policy is to also just jumper out heat and smoke initiation devices to prevent false alarms.
The staff also have no idea how to trouble shoot or repair mechanical failures. If this was the military there would have been a team the engine room mixing and matching salvaged parts from 6 different generator sets . And Jerry rig 1 or 2 more working gen sets.

Mr. Glen M. TAYLOR: As a former cruise line Safety Officer one is the first to criticise the training of the “third-world” crews.
The EMSA is at present considering not recognising the STCW and Licenses issued by the Republic of the Philippines from 2014. However one feels your remarks may be unfair as Senior Engineering Officers are well aware of the weaknesses in the ER crew and the crews generally.
My daily inspections of the ER never found situations such as you describe except when work was being done and then there was a sign to indicate this.
When making statements like this it is helpful to state your personal experience then Senior Officers such as myself can use their contacts to make the situation know to IMO, USCG, and the Flag State for a follow up inspection.
Should you wish to contact me privately and in confidence please e-mail me at boucp@hotmail.com thank you.